MUMBAI: Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel is significantly upping its direct-to-home (DTH) and broadband business. The leading telecom player is looking at bringing a box which will offer a full converged entertainment as well as the capacity to deliver broadband. Although the timeline has been not revealed yet, the box is expected to be launched very soon.

“One of the things we are looking at is to bring in a box, which will offer a full converged entertainment as well as the capacity to deliver broadband. This will happen soon and we are very excited that once we do that, it is a full converged play that we can potentially deliver across multiple spaces. There have been some concerns about cord cutting in the urban areas and metros. We have not seen any evidence of that yet,” Bharti Airtel India and South Asia managing director and chief executive officer Gopal Vittal said in an earnings call. 

Airtel Digital TV saw net addition of 634K customers in the quarter. At the end of the first quarter, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel had 16 million customers with a year-on-year growth of 9.4 per cent. The change in cable and broadcasting sector with the rollout of new tariff order has helped Airtel to grow with a lot of new subscribers coming in from the cable side.

The company’s investments in FTTH pass deployment are now reaping benefits with an expansion in the base and an increase in ARPU as well after ten consecutive quarters of decline. The company is optimistic on the overall market opportunity and focusing on expansion of its fibre presence.